Scottish Mortgage’s Treasury Taps a Premium: How AI and SpaceX Shifted the Trust from Discount to Issuance
02.06.2026 - 16:44:35 | boerse-global.de
For years, Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust fought a rearguard action against its own share price, pouring billions into buybacks to narrow a double-digit discount to net asset value. Now that struggle is over — and the trust has flipped the script. It is issuing shares from its own treasury at a premium, a change so swift that it has caught even seasoned investment trust watchers off guard.
On 1 June, the trust placed 2.35 million shares out of its treasury at 1,516.5 pence each, well above the net asset value per share of 1,401.09 pence at the time. The cash raised flows directly into the portfolio, and the premium adds value for remaining shareholders rather than diluting them. After the transaction, the trust still holds 369.5 million shares in treasury, with 1.115 billion shares outstanding.
The turnabout is stark. In the last fiscal year, Scottish Mortgage spent £1.31 billion on share repurchases, and since the start of 2024 the cumulative buyback total has exceeded £3 billion. That era of heavy repurchases was triggered by a discount that hit 20% in 2023. Today, the shares trade at a premium of roughly 7% to NAV. In Frankfurt, the stock fetched €18.20 on Wednesday, up nearly 31% year-to-date and just 3.5% shy of its 52-week high of €18.85.
ChatGPT Rival Fuels the Fire
The demand surge owes much to the trust’s heavy bet on artificial intelligence. Scottish Mortgage holds a stakes in Anthropic, the developer of the Claude AI assistant. In February, Anthropic unveiled a legal-dedicated plugin that sent shares of incumbents like Thomson Reuters and RELX tumbling by as much as 18% — a validation of the startup’s disruptive potential.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying Scottish Mortgage Investment?
The trust revised its valuation of Anthropic upward in April, lifting the holding’s portfolio weight from 1.1% to 2.5%. The company’s annualised revenue has surged to $47 billion from $30 billion at the start of 2025, and a February funding round valued it at $965 billion, ahead of rival OpenAI. For Scottish Mortgage, that revaluation alone added meaningful NAV growth.
But the biggest single catalyst sits just days away. SpaceX, the trust’s largest holding at 19.3% of the portfolio, is expected to go public on 12 June. Analysts peg the company’s market capitalisation at $1.75 trillion, a figure that would boost Scottish Mortgage’s NAV by an estimated 7% if realised. The IPO is the culmination of years of patient holding in a private company that has become the trust’s defining bet.
Portfolio Weighted to Private Markets and China
Beyond SpaceX, the portfolio’s top names reflect its aggressive tilt toward unlisted growth stories. ByteDance, owner of TikTok, accounts for 4.7%; payments giant Stripe makes up 3.9%. Among listed holdings, Taiwan Semiconductor, MercadoLibre, Amazon, ASML and Nvidia together represent roughly 20% of assets.
That concentration in private assets brings both opportunity and risk. Under revised investment rules approved at the annual general meeting on 10 April, the trust can now commit an additional ÂŁ250 million into private companies even if the unlisted portion already exceeds the 30% ceiling. The extra capacity must be renewed annually, giving shareholders oversight of this flexibility. The cost remains low at 0.33% and no performance fee is charged.
The exposure to China is a wild card. Around 14% of the portfolio is tied to Chinese-linked names, most notably ByteDance. New US restrictions on TikTok could hit the holding, and the latest Trump-Xi meeting offered no signs of trade détente. Political risk here is as real as the upside from AI.
Dividend Growth and Board Refresh
Scottish Mortgage also delivered for income-seeking investors. The full-year dividend rose 4.3% to 4.57 pence per share, marking the 43rd consecutive year of increases. The final payment is due on 10 July.
On the governance front, Heather Manners is set to join as an independent non-executive director in early January, subject to shareholder approval at the 2 July AGM in Edinburgh. Professor Maxwell will step down from the board after that meeting.
What Comes Next
With the SpaceX IPO approaching and the AI narrative still accelerating, the trust has found itself in an unfamiliar position: able to issue shares at a premium rather than scrambling to buy them back. The remaining 369 million treasury shares could supply further placings if demand holds. But a weak SpaceX debut, a sudden chill in US-China relations, or a reversal in AI sentiment could just as easily push the shares back to discount — and restart the buyback machine all over again.
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